


There's no such thing as ending

by EurydicaeQuercus



Series: Death is just a New Beginning [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Control Ending, Gen, She's technically still alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 09:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19374181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EurydicaeQuercus/pseuds/EurydicaeQuercus
Summary: In those last, burning moments as she gripped the control rods, Elizabeth Shepard finally felt a sense of relief as life slipped slowly away. But nothing is ever quite so simple as that, and she has to adjust to a very new, very strange kind of life in its place.





	There's no such thing as ending

She didn’t think it would be like this. It had all seemed so final, so...definite, in those last, lingering moments. White light filling her vision, pain racing through every nerve-ending. Then just...nothing. It was like that for a long time, she thought. Just darkness and a kind of strange, floating sensation keeping her there, suspended, unable to think quite clearly. But she had known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she had to do something. It wasn’t over yet, she had to  _ do _ something—

Then her vision came back. It was extremely bright, too bright to see anything and yet the headache that she expected to form in the front of her skull...did not. She still had one, a skull, that was, or at least if she didn’t she couldn’t tell it wasn’t there. She tried to suspend her arms in front of her. It felt like they were moving. She couldn’t see them.  


Slowly but surely, something was forming before her eyes. It wasn’t...an image, not quite. More like an idea of what an image might be. A dreamlike thing that all at once began to grow and take shape, some things becoming sharper and more definite, others less so. She became aware that she was in many places: Earth, Tuchanka, Thessia, Palaven. Places that, in life, might have excited her to be. Now she just felt a kind of dim satisfaction that they were there at all.  


Elizabeth knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this ought to be worrying her—that if she were human, the existence she was experiencing would be...unpleasant in the extreme. It didn’t seem to matter now though. Things were becoming clear again. The Reapers spread all over the galaxy were now her eyes, but her thoughts remained her own. They were hovering. Safe, at last.  


Suddenly a new sensation arose. A sense of unknowing. The Reapers would no longer attack, not while she was there, but what now? To dispose of them, perhaps? She withdrew her claws from the planets below and waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. Something seemed missing. She remembered a mission, a goal being given to her, always by someone, or something. But now there was nothing. How odd.  


What was her mission now? Before, it had been ‘defeat the Reapers.’ This was done. The Child had failed at its own mission, the confession had now crystallised into a clear memory. She had wanted...she had wanted to fix it, she thought. To keep the peace between synthetics and organics, that had been the mission. She’d done it once. She could do it again. The geth and the quarians would continue as they were with any luck. But the damage the Reapers had done would not be easily fixed. Unless an enormous effort was contributed, the planets the Reapers had decimated would take centuries to recover. She could help.

Something moved inside her. A goal had been found. An irresistible urge to find people, to convince them, seemed to consume her. But then something twitched. Indoctrination. She remembered fighting so hard against it when she was human, and she knew it was wrong. Indoctrination could no longer continue if synthetic and organics were to co-exist. The more emotional part of her wondered why the Child had ever seen such a measure as necessary. It didn’t matter. She reached across the network and felt for the force that had almost doomed all their attempts at survival, then pulled.  


It was hard. It made her head hurt, and across the network a dreadful screeching hit her ears, but she continued. Pain had never stopped her before. It would not stop her now. Gradually, as she pulled harder and harder, the pain intensified, until she felt as though her eyes were being gouged from their sockets. Her vision was fading.  


Then, all at once, the darkness returned. The tension in her shoulders, behind her eyelids, slid away, leaving a cool sensation. It was...gone? She thought again of her mission, her drive for peace. The compulsion had vanished. It worked. A deep sigh escaped what she imagined to be her lungs. It would be alright now. She couldn’t force anyone, anymore. The indoctrination was gone, and it wouldn’t be coming back.  


She sat up again and waited for the light and her vision to return to her. It was still strange, this odd position of being everywhere and yet nowhere at all. The planets returned to view. It was going to be okay. She could help; that was what she was best at, after all.  


A feeling she would have described as contentment flooded her senses. It felt better now, to be able to help, and not be so dreadfully...hurt. One day, she could rest, and her work would be done. The Reapers could not stay forever; she could never lose sight of that. But for now, she could still help. And that was the only thing that mattered. 


End file.
